The work is based on a collaboration between us teams at Department of Brain Sciences and Mathematics at Imperial and UCL's Institute of Neurology.

Non-invasive suppression of essential tremor via phase-locked disruption of its temporal coherence

by Sebastian R. Schreglmann, David Wang, Robert L. Peach, Junheng Li, Xu Zhang, Anna Latorre, Edward Rhodes, Emanuele Panella, Antonino M. Cassara, Edward S. Boyden, Mauricio Barahona, Sabato Santaniello, John Rothwell, Kailash P. Bhatia & Nir Grossman

Short summary

Aberrant synchronous oscillations in the brain have been associated with numerous brain disorders, including neurodevelopment disease, such as autism, neuropsychiatric disease, such as depression, and neurodegenerative disease, such as Alzheimer disease. We report that the aberrant synchronous oscillations that underpin pathological tremor movement, such in essential tremor syndrome, can be non-invasively suppressed by electrical stimulation of the cerebellum phase-locked to the tremorous movement. We show that the suppression of the aberrant synchronous oscillations was mechanistically attributed to the disruption of its temporal coherence. 

The proposed neuromodulation strategy that targets the temporal coherence of aberrant synchronous oscillations may in the future provide a powerful interventional strategy for tremor disorders and other brain disorders. 

The full paper is available at the following link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20581-7